Atlantis — Section 30

XIV

Miss Burns took out her little purse, refusing to let Frederick pay for her, and they stepped out again into the busy streets.

"By Jove," said Frederick, whose manner when in the hurly-burly changed completely, "what a lot of stuff I have been chattering!

I deserve to be punished for trying your patience to such an extent.

I must have bored you horribly."

"Oh, no," she said, "I am accustomed to such conversations.

I have associated with artists for many years."

"Do you mean to impugn my truthfulness, Miss Burns?"

Frederick asked in some alarm.

"No, but I think," she said calmly, with almost masculine firmness, "that if nature makes us suffer through something, she does not intend us to suffer again and again from the same thing.

It seems to me the Creator had a definite intention in always and everywhere placing night and sleep between day and day."

"Not always and not everywhere," Frederick observed, thinking of the difficulty he had had for many nights in snatching a few hours' sleep.

At a street crossing Miss Burns stopped to wait for a car to take her back to the studio.

"Look at that," said Frederick, pointing to six similar placards of gigantic dimensions, which represented Mara, the Spider's Victim, in screaming colours.

A green stripe was pasted slantwise on each placard, announcing that the dancer had been suffering from the consequences of the shipwreck, but that she would appear at Webster and Forster's the next day for the first time in America.

Above the advertisement on the same wall were seven or eight full-length pictures of Arthur Stoss larger than life-size.

"Your little friend invited Mr. Ritter to a rehearsal in a theatre on Broadway day after to-morrow.

It was not Webster and Forster's," said Miss Burns.

Frederick explained what had happened in connection with Mr. Lilienfeld, though he himself had not known of the intended rehearsal.

"I feel nothing but pity for that girl," he said lightly.

"As a result of a strange combination of circumstances, I feel I am responsible for her.

She lost her father, who was all in all to her, since she is not on good terms with her mother."

"Indeed?"

said Miss Burns.

"Why, this very morning in a short conversation in the studio, she told me something very different."

"She did!"

exclaimed Frederick.

"She told me that in many ways her father had been a fearful burden to her.

In the first place, she had to earn money for him, and then he tyrannised over her terribly."

"Well," said Frederick, somewhat confused, "it is perhaps the essence of perversion that a person feels compelled to hoodwink people by doing things and making statements the very reverse of what is natural and what is to be expected.

Miss Burns, I wish, I heartily wish, you would look out a little for that poor creature drifting about without anybody or anything to guide her."

"Good-bye," said Miss Burns, hailing a car.

"Come and start work in the studio as soon as possible.

As for your little friend, she is too self-willed.

In fact, she has an iron will.

There is no holding her, or leading her, that would keep her from doing anything she had once made up her mind to do."

When the car had carried Miss Burns off into the stream of New York traffic, Frederick, strangely enough, had a fleeting sense of forlornness, to him a novel sensation.

Feeling inclined to taste it to the full, he continued to walk the streets alone, choosing his way at random.

For the first time after speaking so freely to a comparative stranger, he did not regret his conduct.

Again and again he went over in his mind his first meeting with Miss Burns in the studio, her manner during the lively carousal, when they discussed the wooden Madonna, his second meeting with her on the street, her upright carriage, her proud eyes, her imposing appearance in the little cosmopolitan restaurant.

Without intending to, she undeniably dominated her surroundings, and that merely as a result of her naturalness.

It had given Frederick secret pleasure to watch her eat and drink daintily, yet heartily, without any airs or graces, and systematically dissect her orange and peel her apple.

Eating and drinking was to her a noble, legitimate and also inevitable act, not to be disposed of lightly beneath a foolish masquerade.

When Frederick recommended Ingigerd to her guidance, he did so because he himself had experienced a beneficent influence from her remarks, dictated by a beautiful intellect, and from the glance of her straight, honest, scrutinising eyes.

"At the risk of making myself ridiculous," he said to himself, "I will go to Ritter's studio to-morrow morning, bury my hands in the clay, and try to reconstruct my life again from the bottom up out of moist clay."

XV

At about ten o'clock the next morning Ritter himself gave Frederick a very glad, bright welcome to his studio, and assigned to him a small room opening on Miss Burns's room.

Miss Burns proposed that he begin by copying a plaster-cast of the arm of the Saxon athlete.

Frederick for the first time handled the moist clay fraught with so much significance, the clay out of which the gods made man and man in turn has made gods.

As a result of the hours he had spent in Rome with sculptor friends, watching them work and observing each movement of their fingers, he accomplished his task with great ease, to his own astonishment and Miss Burns's admiration.

His anatomical knowledge and medical experience also stood him in good stead.

Shortly before completing his course as a medical student, he had for a time entertained the idea of publishing an anatomy for sculptors, and with this in view had made a number of drawings which won the favour of real connoisseurs.

After Frederick had worked feverishly with his shirt sleeves rolled up for three hours, the athlete's muscular arm began to take shape clearly, and he felt a sense of satisfaction wholly novel to him.

In working he completely forgot who he was, and where he was.

When Willy Snyders came in, as he usually did on his way from his work to luncheon for the purpose of saying "how-do-you-do" to Bonifacius Ritter and art, it seemed to Frederick that he had been awakened from a dream and called back to a strange life.

"I am sorry to have to leave work and go to lunch.

Lunch is really a very disturbing thing," he confessed.

When Ritter entered, they all laughed heartily at his genuine passion for sculpture.

"When I return to Europe," he said, "I must immediately make portraits of my three children."

Miss Burns and Willy Snyders had actually made Frederick proud by their praise, though in Ritter's presence they turned silent awaiting the master's verdict.

"You must certainly have modelled in clay before," said Ritter.

Frederick could honestly deny that he ever had.

"Well," Ritter rejoined, "then you have handled your material like a man who has art in his blood.

To judge by this first attempt, it seems to me you have merely been waiting for the clay and the clay has been waiting for you."

"We'll see," said Frederick, and added, "Unfortunately there is a serious drawback.

The saying is that all beginnings are difficult.

My former experiences lead me to believe that with me the reverse is generally true.

As a rule I win the first and second round of chess, or cards, or billiards, and lose in the end.

I succeeded at first in my practice and my bacteriological researches.

If I write a book, only the first and second chapters are worth anything."

The artists refused to believe this, though there was a grain of truth in what he said.

Nevertheless, Frederick left the studio with them in a healthier frame of mind than he had been in for years.

But his spirits departed in a measure after he had spoken with Ingigerd Hahlström in the club-house.

The girl listened unsympathetically, if not ironically, to his account of his new occupation.

Ritter, Willy and Lobkowitz were secretly outraged at her disdainful remarks, especially since they observed that Frederick was still entangled in the girl's meshes, body and soul.

She told him he must go to Webster and Forster and insist on their withdrawing a notification which they had sent to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Since her new contract with Lilienfeld meant the loss of the money that she was worth to them, they wanted revenge, at least, and were going to put a spoke in their competitor's wheel.

Ingigerd, beside herself with rage, told Frederick that in the morning she had had a brief rehearsal in the theatre, and a representative of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had announced his intention of attending the rehearsal the next day.

She was bent upon letting her light shine in New York and receiving twofold homage, the homage of pity and the homage of admiration.

Besides, she did not want to lose the money in prospect.

If she were prevented from appearing in New York, there was no chance for her anywhere in the United States.

It was useless to oppose the girl's obstinate will.

Whether or no, to his unspoken disgust, Frederick had to perform messenger and handy-man services for the little star.

He rushed from Webster and Forster to Lilienfeld, from Lilienfeld to the attorneys, Brown and Samuelson, from Second Avenue to Fourth Avenue, from Fourth Avenue to Fifth Avenue, finally to knock at the door of Mr. Garry himself, the head of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and represent to him Ingigerd Hahlström's position, which was, that by preventing her appearance, the society would expose her to material want in a strange country.

Mr. Garry refused to receive Frederick.

Fortunately for him, Willy Snyders the good-hearted, in order to make things as easy as possible for him, sacrificed himself by obtaining an afternoon's leave of absence from work.

His saucy, healthy humour, his jolly remarks on New York conditions helped Frederick through many unpleasant moments.

Frederick was happy when the next morning came and he could go at his modelling again.

His brain, whirling with the rattle and clatter of New York, could spend itself in his passionate occupation, which employed both his eyes and his hands.

He deemed himself fortunate for being genuinely unpractical and not having to take part in that gruesome horse-racing and sack-racing and target-shooting, that crawling and dancing and jumping for the sacrosanct dollar.

The very breath of that frenzied life tore the garments of his soul into shreds, as it were, while this simple occupation of modelling the details of the athlete's arm, was healing to his soul.

He was conscious of it.

Now and then Miss Burns came in to inspect his work and exchange a few words with him.

He liked this.

Her companionable presence soothed him and even made him happy.

Her figure, her gestures, her conversation seemed to be the very essence of firmness and repose, and her self-sufficiency always aroused Frederick's silent admiration.

When he told her how perceptibly his new work acted as a sedative upon him, she replied that she had had the same experience, and if he did not fly off at a tangent but remained steadily at the work, he would feel the good it did him even more.